The Far Away Brothers:
Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American LifeLauren Markham

In 2013, stories about unaccompanied minors started coming across our airwaves, feeds, and timelines.

These children, we learned, were fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in record numbers. They were making the long, arduous trek to El Norte through the vast expanse of Mexico and the borderlands. And they were doing all of this, at great expense and risk of death, unaccompanied by their parents.

The words we kept hearing were “flood” and “surge,” conjuring images of a dark and stormy sea washing over our southern border – perhaps the violent waves of a tsunami crashing ashore.